For Whom The Death TollsDeliberate
Undercounting of “Coalition” Fatalities
by Paul de Rooij

www.dissidentvoice.org
January 24, 2004

There
is evidence of a concerted effort afoot to obfuscate the number of
casualties in the recent crop of US-led wars. May 1st was the day
the president Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and declared the end to the
war and the start of the occupation of Iraq. [1] Since
then many casualty numbers have been publicized, most of them disingenuous
fudges of the real death toll. There are many reasons why the casualty toll
is understated, which we dissect in this brief essay.

The Bush regime is doing its best to hide the
human cost of its recent wars. Publicity of the soldiers’ deaths is bad
during an election year, and would be bad for the continued justification
for the American occupation of Iraq. If they are intent on hiding the
casualty figures, then it behooves us to uncover and amplify them.

Are We
a “Coalition”?

The US propagandists and
the media refer to the term “coalition” when it suits them. When it is
important to show that the US didn’t act alone without UN authorization,
then the virtues of the “coalition” are extolled. When the purpose is to
reduce the numbers of casualties reported and to hide the death toll, then
it is convenient to count the US casualties exclusively. The fact that
British, Danish, Spanish, Polish, … and Iraqis working for US aren’t added
to the casualty tally used by the media is less than honest.

If one found that the US media focused
exclusively on US casualties, then this may be understandable. The British
are the second most important contingent in the so-called coalition, and one
would expect the British media to report casualties of both the US and UK.
However, when reporting on the seriousness of the situation the BBC also
separates the figures and focuses on the US casualties. BBC Online has
numerous articles dealing exclusively with US casualties, and separately
there are a few articles on British casualties. [2]
One can only interpret this as an attempt to reduce the reported numbers and
hide the scale of the resistance against the “coalition”. And downplaying
the British casualties even in British media is odd to say the least.

Classification Fudge

If a soldier steps on a
landmine, should the victim be classified as a “hostile” casualty? How
about someone killed clearing mines? In order to arrive at the
media-reported fatality statistics, one must actually classify several such
deaths as “non-hostile” –- which are thus not reported by most media, as
they only report the soldiers killed by “hostile” action. Of course, the
major news groups are not required to use the propaganda compliant numbers
-- they keep extensive lists too. And if they aren’t willing to work out
the numbers themselves, they could refer to
Lunaville (a good quality data source). [3]
However, the classification currently used definitely results in a reduction
of the number of reported casualties. It is also clear that the Pentagon’s
numbers are used widely; otherwise, one couldn’t explain how CNN’s figures
are the same as those reported by the BBC. Anyone attempting to record
casualty figures, distinguishing for cause of death, would most likely have
derived a different tally. Since this is not the case with major media, one
can only infer that the use of propaganda compliant numbers serves to reduce
the reported toll.

There is also clear manipulation of the data.
For example, soldiers killed by hostile actions are subsequently
reclassified as accidental deaths. [4]
The simple fact that this manipulation is evident to anyone willing to
investigate this should be reason enough to report all the fatalities
irrespective of their reported cause of death, but this is not the case.

The graph below shows a relatively high level
of “non-hostile” deaths during May 2003. It looks somewhat suspicious, and
it may be an interesting question that intrepid embedded journalists could
ask of their Pentagon handlers. Initially there were many deaths due to
“Humvee rollovers” –- 17 to be precise; perhaps soldiers now wear seat belts
explaining why this cause of death has disappeared. A more likely
explanation is that the cause of death was really due to hostile action,
i.e., rollovers of an explosive kind. Even a simple eyeball approach to
statistics reveals an odd reduction of the “non-hostile” deaths in the
graph.

Honest reporting would require tallying a
casualty if the victim would be alive today had they not been in Iraq.
Dying of heatstroke, unexplained illnesses, clearing landmines, Humvee
rollovers, suicide, fragging [5],
should all be included in the tally. Only then is it possible to obtain a
better picture of what is happening on the ground, and estimate what the
real casualty figures may be like in the future. And there is one argument
that Americans will surely understand: these numbers also indicate how
costly this occupation is going to be in dollar terms.

Some Statistics

It is curious that for a
nation obsessed with stock market charts virtually no news organization
publishes soldier fatality charts. The chart below merges the fatalities of
both the US and uk (yes, lowercase uk –- the British contingent is less than
10% of the total). It is clear that there is an upward fatality trend, and
this is surprising because all foreign military forces in Iraq have reduced
their exposure. For example, this is what Patrick Cockburn had to say about
this:

Overall, the capture of Saddam Hussein seems
to have made little difference to the level of resistance. This is not
immediately obvious, because the number of attacks on US forces is down to
about 17 a day now, compared with twice that two months ago. But this is in
large part because, eager to cut their casualties, US commanders cut the
number of patrols they carry out by two thirds from 1,500 a day in November
to 500 a day in December. (Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, January
13, 2004)

So, if the
exposure to potential threats has diminished, and the casualty rate is up,
then this only means one thing: the resistance is growing fiercer. The
overall average rate of fatalities stands at 1.5 per day for the May 1
through Jan. 21, 2004 period. The rate in the last month stands at 1.8, and
the forecast for the fatality rate in May 2004 is 1.9/day. The rate of
fatalities is increasing. Whereas during the first four months of the
occupation the reported “hostile” causes of fatalities stood at 50%, now
this has risen to 65% for the period May 1st thru Jan. 21, 2004.

Curiously,
no media organization publishes the racial composition of the fatalities.
The table below refers to the May 1, 2003 through Jan 21, 2004 period.

Race/ethnic group of US-uk soldiers (May 1, 03 – Jan 21, 04)

Number

White

274

68%

Black/Afro-American

53

13%

Hispanic

37

9%

Other

8

2%

NA

30

8%

Total

402

Women

10

2.5%

Classification done by author from photographs. This is an imperfect
means of classification, but no other source is available.

The racial composition of
the casualties remains roughly constant, with a slight increase in the
number of whites killed (this has gone from 65 to 68% of the total).

The average age and the average military rank
of the fatalities are also increasing. The explanation for this is that
frontline troops tend to be younger and have lower rank. So, when the
conflict changes from a hot war to occupation there is a shift in the nature
of casualties: these go from frontline soldiers to reserve duty soldiers;
the latter tend to be older and have higher rank. Furthermore, the Iraqi
resistance’s methods to attack the troops also explain this pattern.
Mortars lobbed into military camps give everyone an even chance of getting
hurt; the same holds for military convoys hit by “IEDs” (a new military term
for: improvised explosive device).

Finally, for a culture obsessed with financial
or weather forecasts, it is odd that no one forecasts the military
fatalities. In an article in September 2003, I forecasted that the US-uk
fatalities from May 1st to Dec. 31st would be 374; the
actual number turned out to be 374. Again, this isn’t rocket science, it
just requires some basic statistics. The forecast for the May 1,
2003 until May 1, 2004 is of 607 US-uk military fatalities, although it is
likely that it will be somewhat lower since the Iraqi resistance is running
out of explosives and ammunition. A forecast around 550 fatalities is more
probable, unless the Iraqis manage to bring down a transport plane –- the
one hit on Jan. 8th had 69 military personnel on board, but fortunately it
wasn’t brought down.

Today’s
Miracle Workers

There have been thousands
of soldiers transferred to Germany or the US for medical treatment.
Initially, one found the occasional report of a soldier who subsequently
died of his wounds in hospital. During the past few months, there have been
only three reports of such deaths even though the casualty rate has
increased. Either such fatalities are now classified as medical
malpractice, or the doctors are performing miracles and keeping all wounded
soldiers alive. At least two suicides of returning soldiers at a military
hospital were treated as local casualties. One thing is certain, there is
ample dishonesty creeping into the counting of the death toll by refusing to
count those dying at hospitals such as the Walter Reed Medical Center in
Washington.

Mercenaries

Another important factor
influencing the tally are the mercenaries. The number of mercenaries has
increased markedly. If one travels to the Baghdad airport one finds many
Gurkhas in guard posts. There are 300 Fijian mercenaries in Iraq hired by a
private contractor, and there are other private security personnel working
elsewhere in Iraq. When these folks are killed, many of them also American
citizens, then their numbers don’t inflate the casualty toll. A recent
BusinessWeek article on the mercenary industry reported the deaths of
some of the employees of a Haliburton subsidiary; these deaths will not
inflate the death toll statistics. The attitude seems to be that they were
just paid to do a risky job; if they were killed, tough luck! With this
situation, it is impossible to obtain the true death toll.

On August 20th a translator wearing
a full US Army uniform was killed, yet his death doesn’t count as a fatality
statistic in the CentCom press releases. The translator must have been on a
contract with the US Army, and although he was an American citizen, his
death won’t count. CNN or the BBC also don’t count this victim, and this
can be easily determined by checking the extensive lists kept by both these
news organizations. By excluding such deaths from their tallies, both CNN
and BBC remain propaganda-compliant.

Errors
and Omissions

Anyone trying to make
sense of the casualty numbers reported by CentCom or DefenseLink will find
increasingly that there are reporting errors. [6]
For example, dates are sometimes wrong, the archive records are incomplete
(e.g., DefenseLink October listing is incomplete and until recently one
could not retrieve early records) and the number of casualties in one of
these sources doesn’t match the other. CentCom failed to report altogether
the 17 deaths from a helicopter collision on Nov. 15th. On Nov.
2nd, sixteen soldiers were reported killed in the recent downing
of the Chinook helicopter, while the initial CentCom report only listed 15,
and it was not updated; when one adds up the confirmed deaths in the
DefenseLink website, then one only counts 14. The other little errors are
simply boring but it points to a concerted effort to obfuscate the death
toll.

Only
Dead Count?

It is rather odd only to
be concerned about counting the dead. There are plenty of soldiers maimed
and their lives ruined. Although the number of these casualties is
putatively available, it is only made available if requested by
journalists. One can only conclude that there haven’t been too many
requests, thus explaining the difficulty in obtaining these statistics.

Some soldiers may not appear in any statistic
yet, but many are near areas where Depleted Uranium munitions [aka, DU ammo]
were used -– this even occurred in the middle of Baghdad, where even a water
treatment plant was demolished with DU-ammo. Vast stretches of Iraq have
been poisoned from the reckless bombing of chemical and nuclear sites, and
now soldiers are expected to work there. The war departments of both the UK
and US are intent on hiding the numbers of new Gulf-War-Syndrome cases, but
a court case in London has revealed that there already are some. Given that
many more soldiers died from this syndrome than on the 1991 Gulf War
battlefield, then one must expect a new death toll to emerge in the months
to come, and it will likely not appear on the CNN tally. Soldiers are
forced to work in a toxic soup [7]
and when soldiers die of horrible diseases this will likely be in the US,
and thus will not be counted.

Callousness: Exhibit 1

President Bush exhibits
some unexplained callousness when confronted with the soldier casualties;
the likely reason for this may be that he is empathy-impaired. Bush has not
attended any of the soldier funerals, and has paid very few visits to
wounded soldiers in the hospital – so much for “supporting our troops”. It is also clear
that the White House is doing its best to hide the statistics or references
to the soldier casualties. The wounded soldiers are flown in at night, and
journalists are barred from reporting on the arrival of coffins, or their
burial. Again, mention of the casualties is bad for the justification of
the continuation of the occupation of Iraq, and it is bad for politics
during an election year.

Soon at
a Mall Near You

Military analysts report
a very high incidence of suicides in Iraq when compared to other conflicts,
and there have been some evacuations of soldiers due to mental distress.
The period of service is long, the stress is very high, and therefore we can
expect large number of mental disorders to develop. When these soldiers
return to the US, to a society that is not supporting them or assisting them
with their mental condition, we can then expect a shooting rampage or two.
These are true ticking time bombs, soon to boost a death tally.

How
about the Iraqis…

CNN and BBC rarely report
on the “coalition”-Iraqi soldiers or policemen killed. They make a
statistic the day a bomb explodes, but then there is no running tally for
them. This privilege of appearing in a tally is reserved only for American
or British casualties.

The number of other Iraqis killed is also not
reported, and journalists are barred from visiting the morgues to determine
this side of the ghastly death toll. It is important for us to know this
statistic simply to know if the locals have a legitimate grievance and if
the occupation is sitting on top of an unmanageable situation. Again, the
release of such information is taboo to the new owners of Iraq.

Blood-Soaked Cake

The neocons cheered on
the war against Iraq claiming it would be a cakewalk. When questions arose
about the wisdom of this war, they recited the “support our troops” mantra,
and now they are squabbling among themselves to determine which country to
target next. These dogs of war are safely ensconced in their
air-conditioned think tanks, not really giving a damn about who is being
killed or who is paying for all of this, and now they are banging the war
drums for their next foray. The execrable Richard Perle also stated that
“we” are in Iraq for the long haul no matter the cost.
[8]

Unfortunately, there are many Americans who
seem to be content with this state of affairs and who don’t seem to mind the
terrible cost exacted from the people in the area. The only thing that
seems to matter is the number of American (and possibly British) soldiers
killed, but even that real interest is not adequately answered. As shown in
this article, the propagandists are intent on obfuscating these statistics
and are even seeking to hide the arrival of the coffins back in the US. To
avoid further wars, to truly “support our troops,” and to rein in the
insufferable neocons, it is essential that the population at large be made
aware of the costs of these wars. Everyone should be made aware of the
terrible toll in terms of blood and money.

ENDNOTES[1]To
be propaganda compliant one would have to state that on May 1st
the president declared that the US halted “major combat operations.” Given
the mounting casualties post-May 1st, the White House emphasizes
that it didn’t declare an end to the war then, but an end to the hot war.
[2]BBC Online keeps a list of all the
fatalities, but then this only refers to the American fatalities! See:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3019552.stm
[3] http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx
NB: the data used for this report overlaps to a great extent with this data
source. The difference between the two is that some errors have been
corrected, and some casualties have been added that are not available in the
official record, but only in the media accounts.
[4] "Predictable
Propaganda," Dissident Voice September 3, 2003.
[5] Shooting the commanding officer is called fragging. There already has
been one such incident.
[6]After a fatality occurs CentCom issues a
simple press release. These can be viewed here:
www.centcom.mil/CENTCOMNews. Some days afterwards DefenseLink will issue
a press release stating the name of the victims with a brief explanation.
These releases can be viewed here:
www.defenselink.mil/releases/
[7] Discussed in the January 1, 2004 interview with Doug Rokke, an Army
Reserve Major, conducted by Dennis Bernstein on Flashpoints (www.flashpoints.net/index.html).[8]If
Perle deems fit to refer to an eminent journalist as the “execrable Robert
Fisk”, then it is fair game to label him likewise.